Various types of hearing prostheses may provide persons with different types of hearing loss with the ability to perceive sound. Hearing loss may be conductive, sensorineural, or some combination of both conductive and sensorineural. Conductive hearing loss typically results from a dysfunction in any of the mechanisms that ordinarily conduct sound waves through the outer ear, the eardrum, or the bones of the middle ear. Sensorineural hearing loss typically results from a dysfunction in the inner ear, including the cochlea where sound vibrations are converted into neural signals, or any other part of the ear, auditory nerve, or brain that may process the neural signals.
Persons with some forms of conductive hearing loss may benefit from hearing prostheses, such as acoustic hearing aids or vibration-based hearing devices. An acoustic hearing aid typically includes a small microphone to detect sound, an amplifier to amplify certain portions of the detected sound, and a small speaker to transmit the amplified sounds into the person's ear. Vibration-based hearing devices typically include a small microphone to detect sound and a vibration mechanism to apply vibrations corresponding to the detected sound to a person's bone, thereby causing vibrations in the person's inner ear and bypassing the person's auditory canal and middle ear. Vibration-based hearing devices may include bone anchored devices, direct acoustic cochlear stimulation devices, or other vibration-based devices. A bone anchored device typically utilizes a surgically-implanted mechanism to transmit vibrations corresponding to sound via the skull. A direct acoustic cochlear stimulation device also typically utilizes a surgically-implanted mechanism to transmit vibrations corresponding to sound, but bypasses the skull and more directly stimulates the inner ear. Other non-surgical vibration-based hearing devices may use similar vibration mechanisms to transmit sound via direct vibration of teeth or other cranial or facial bones.
Persons with certain forms of sensorineural hearing loss may benefit from prostheses, such as cochlear implants and/or auditory brainstem implants. For example, cochlear implants may provide a person having sensorineural hearing loss with the ability to perceive sound by stimulating the person's auditory nerve via an array of electrodes implanted in the person's cochlea. A component of the cochlear implant detects sound waves, which are converted into a series of electrical stimulation signals delivered to the implant recipient's cochlea via the array of electrodes. Auditory brainstem implants may use technology similar to cochlear implants, but instead of applying electrical stimulation to a person's cochlea, auditory brainstem implants apply electrical stimulation directly to a person's brain stem, bypassing the cochlea altogether. Electrically stimulating auditory nerves in a cochlea with a cochlear implant or electrically stimulating a brainstem may enable persons with sensorineural hearing loss to perceive sound.
Such prostheses typically include a user interface to control various functions thereof. For example, the user interface may include physical buttons, switches, dials, and the like that are disposed on a prosthesis and used to turn the prosthesis on and off, to adjust the volume, change settings or operating modes, adjust other audio processing parameters, such as gain, sensitivity, frequency filtering, etc. In another example, the user interface may include a separate remote control that communicates with the prosthesis in any known wired or wireless manner, such as through a radio frequency, infrared light, laser light, and/or visible light signal.